D&D General D&D tries to be a little of everything, and that's its secret strength (and weakness)

[BookTenTiger]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how different everyone's experiences with D&D are. I feel like in the same thread we have folks who enjoy dungeons, who only use dungeons, who never use dungeons... Folks who play fighters as magic-powered beings and folks who play fighters as purely mundane... Folks who play only levels 1 - 10 and folks who prefer high level...

I feel like D&D actively tries to meet all these demands in its design. It's a combat simulator and also a shared storytelling engine. Some parts of the rules are super gritty, others are basically hand-waved. There is no one official setting, but there is a base set of assumptions about the world portrayed in the rules.

To me, I see this as a huge strength of D&D. The fact that everyone can have these equally valid but very different experiences with D&D helps it reach a wider audience and survive over generations. The game can evolve not just over editions, but also over time at a single gaming table. (I know the friends I played with 20 years ago now play a lot differently!)

But at the same time, this design philosophy can be a weakness. D&D seems like it's trying to balance itself between so many playstyles that, at times, it doesn't do any of them well. It can also lack the richness of lore and theme that RPGs that focus on a single setting or playstyles do.

These are just some basic thoughts, but what do you think? Has D&D always tried to be lots of things to lots of people? Would it benefit from a clearer, narrower vision? Or is its messiness a benefit?

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D was nominally the first RPG, and it has remained the only one potential new players outside the hobby are likely to hear of, so it's stayed the most popular & commercially successful TTRPG prettymuch throughout it's nigh-50 year history.

And that contributes to the perception that it can be all things to all gamers - because, for decades, we've forced the chunky square D&D peg into many smaller holes of myriad shapes - and that it's uniquely successful at doing so (still #1!)

Between not needing to improve to stay on top, and being tempted to support that 'do-anything' perception, D&D has gotten really messy, sure. IDK that it's a strength, nor that it would benefit from a clearer vision or neater design. (We know that it got backlash from a better-balanced design).
It's just a reality of the game's unique history and position in the hobby.

 

[overgeeked]

Most of what you're saying only applies to certain editions of D&D and not others. Some were more focused, others less so. Some had rich and in-depth lore, others less so. There's very little, especially playstyles, that have a solid through line across D&D editions.

But at the same time, this design philosophy can be a weakness. D&D seems like it's trying to balance itself between so many playstyles that, at times, it doesn't do any of them well. It can also lack the richness of lore and theme that RPGs that focus on a single setting or playstyles do.

For me, that's the crux of it. 5E doesn't do anything particularly well as a game...unless let the players just win all the time without breaking a sweat is an intentional design choice for gameplay. 4E knew what it was trying to do and did it quite well. Not a lot of D&D players wanted that from a game called D&D, so it didn't last. 3X knew what it was trying to do and did it...until it fell under its own weight re: rules for everything. So too with 2E and AD&D. The rules produced a particular kind of play. Whether people liked that style or not largely determined whether they liked that edition or not.

These are just some basic thoughts, but what do you think? Has D&D always tried to be lots of things to lots of people? Would it benefit from a clearer, narrower vision? Or is its messiness a benefit?

No. D&D has been more or less focused depending on the edition. 5E absolutely tries to be all things to all people.

It all depends on what you mean by "benefit." Would the game be better designed as a game? Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt. Would sales go down? Absolutely, 100%, without a doubt. Sales would likely drop if they put out a more unified, directed, or focused vision of what they wanted the game to be. Anyone who didn't like that vision would leave the game.

Near as I can tell, WotC stumbled into 5E's popularity. They designed it as the last edition of D&D, as in this is it, the brand is being rested, one last chance to make the game. Only because of a quirk in the design, i.e. the encounters per day math and PC resources, WotC stumbled into a fantasy superhero game where the PCs are gods even from low levels, there's no risk or danger and the game delivers power fantasy by the truckload. But that's down to the adventuring day math and almost no one sticking to that, so PC resources wildly, dramatically, absurdly outstrip just about every single encounter put in front of them. And apparently that's exactly what D&D fans were in the mood for. Because...boom.

All that said, D&D is...generally speaking...fairly unified in its design goals. It's always been a monster-fighting game. It does that to varying degrees of success. But it's always about fighting monsters. That some people don't play it that way in no way changes that being the absolute fundamental core of the game's design across editions.

 

[Maxperson]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how different everyone's experiences with D&D are. I feel like in the same thread we have folks who enjoy dungeons, who only use dungeons, who never use dungeons... Folks who play fighters as magic-powered beings and folks who play fighters as purely mundane... Folks who play only levels 1 - 10 and folks who prefer high level...

I feel like D&D actively tries to meet all these demands in its design. It's a combat simulator and also a shared storytelling engine. Some parts of the rules are super gritty, others are basically hand-waved. There is no one official setting, but there is a base set of assumptions about the world portrayed in the rules.

To me, I see this as a huge strength of D&D. The fact that everyone can have these equally valid but very different experiences with D&D helps it reach a wider audience and survive over generations. The game can evolve not just over editions, but also over time at a single gaming table. (I know the friends I played with 20 years ago now play a lot differently!)

But at the same time, this design philosophy can be a weakness. D&D seems like it's trying to balance itself between so many playstyles that, at times, it doesn't do any of them well. It can also lack the richness of lore and theme that RPGs that focus on a single setting or playstyles do.

These are just some basic thoughts, but what do you think? Has D&D always tried to be lots of things to lots of people? Would it benefit from a clearer, narrower vision? Or is its messiness a benefit?

I've been saying for many years that D&D's biggest strength is that it does pretty much any playstyle decently to well, but not great. Then DMs can tweak things from there to make it a bit better at the style that they run.

 

[Stormonu]

It's the original GURPS - without being GURPS.

It has always been a kitchen-sink game to emulate heroic fantasy. Late 1E/2E was when the designers started to ponder giving it strong identities through various campaign worlds like Dark Sun, Council of Wyrms and the myriad published campaign worlds.

Over time, companies have moved to branding and making what they own unique to themselves. D&D wasn't build like that - it was designed in a time where you took what was good about what you liked and threw the rest to the side. It steals EVERYTHING from fantasy and adjacent genres. I think it should stay in that realm and trying to brand it along the likes of Only Tolkien or Only Witcher or Only MTG or Only Self-Referential is a big mistake.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's say we are more interested into buying the bricks to build than the prebuilt house.

Flexibility is necessary, but Hasbro wants D&D brand to be a multimedia franchise.

If it has a weak point is the d20 system is not ready yet to be universal genres. You can create a sci-fi d20 or a superheroes d20, but these being retrocompatible with d20 fantasy is a totally different threat. I would bet if Hasbro could, we would see lots of "collabs" or crossovers with D&D, as Fortnite.

And today selling a brand thanks the lore is not easy. I mean I don't need to spend a lot of money to know about the metaplot of World of Darkness, for example, when I can read freely the fandom wikis about novels, comics, videogames or teleseries.

And don't put all the egs in an only basket.

 

[darjr]

D&D has baggage that makes it D&D.

That's good and bad.

But it's what makes it D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

I've been saying for many years that D&D's biggest strength is that it does pretty much any playstyle decently to well, but not great. Then DMs can tweak things from there to make it a bit better at the style that they run.

It also mallow fornangear shift using the same characters, from one aort ofnexperience to another.

Which is what we experience in life: my own life has not been a curated boutique genre experience, but a baroque mess of random fortune and decision points.

 

[Oofta]

I like D&D because I've been able to create a campaign world in the fantasy image that I have and run the type of campaign I want. So it's a little bit magi-punk, a little eldritch horror, some plane hopping with a mix of Norse and a bit of Celtic lore thrown in. Yep, it's a garbage can smoothie of ideas that are plucked from various random sources. Much like the rest of D&D. Other people can run campaigns that lean more into gothic horror with Ravenloft, do noir fantasy with Eberron, space pirates with Spelljammer.

But it works for me. I don't have to worry about some game established meta-plot or built in narrative. I don't have to worry that my golden age superhero character might have accidentally killed what he thought was an actual werewolf which freaked him out. Which by the way was because, as per the genre restrictions, he had a secret identity which in his case that he was actually a young kid.

No, D&D will never be as good at playing pirates as a pirate-centric RP game. Cthulhu is dedicated to cosmic horror so it's going to better at that, but will not as good at other things D&D does better. Then there are other whole approaches to TTRPG with things like narrative collaborative games.

The important thing to me is that using rulings and house rules the game can be shifted and molded into what the group wants, even within the generic gold standard fantasy dumping ground of Forgotten Realms.

So I'm not playing in WOTC's sandbox if I don't want to, I'm playing in my own fantasy world that has little to do with official lore unless I decide to throw that official lore into the mix. I'm not even playing strictly by WOTCs's rules if my own spin on the rules works better for me. It's that flexibility, the fact that D&D provides the building blocks for me to build what I want that I enjoy.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The thing I always find curious though is that we KNOW what D&D is. It is what it is. And yet we still see so many people get bent out of shape at places like here when D&D isn't something else. The fact that D&D doesn't do X particularly well (at least not as well as another game that was built specifically for the purpose of doing X well)... gets them genuinely upset. Which is just bizarre to me. We KNOW the designers of the game are never going to turn D&D into whatever it is we think it "should" be... so why does that bother us so? Why have we put so much emphasis on this game of 'D&D' that we need THIS game to be the game WE want, when we could just as easily play the game that was designed to be what we want?

Now of course the answers are 'nostalgia', 'community' and 'laziness'. 'Nostalgia' because we remember playing and loving D&D in the previous times-- back when we didn't care about X, Y, or Z in our gaming-- and wish we could still play and love D&D that same way again even though we want our gaming to include X, Y, and Z.

'Community' because it is indeed the largest and most popular roleplaying game out there, and there is something to be said to feeling good about being part of a group. So we want that community aspect, but just wish the game we have to play to be a part of it was more to our liking.

And 'laziness'? Heh... well, that just comes down to not going all-out to find those 3 other people somewhere out there in the great wide world that are willing to sit at our table and play whatever ridiculous, bizarro-world version of an RPG that we are desperate to play. Finding 3 people who will play my game with all my crazy, out-there beliefs of what makes a good RPG... all my weird house rules that make the game run in a certain way... all that can be a tall order and tiring task. And at some point if I can't find them, rather than keeping at it and working harder to find those 3 players to sit at my table... I just instead come to places like this and demand that the WotC designers turn D&D into my ridiculous, bizarro-world RPG so that my pool of player options becomes larger and I don't have to work as hard to fill my table.

But of course the issue with that is that the designers of D&D don't give a rat's ass that you can't find players that go along with whatever hyper-specific, weird way you feel like you need your game to be to be happy. So they aren't going to change their priorities just for you. You just need to work harder and do a better job in selling your ridiculous and bizarro-world RPG idea to eventually find those 3 players.